💾 Archived View for tilde.pink › ~pabrobet › linux-log.gmi captured on 2023-09-28 at 16:15:59. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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I am relatively new to Linux, I've only used it for about 9 months now, I tried Ubuntu once before, but didn't really stick to it. Since last year I have been using Manjaro almost exclusively. Some people say that Linux is not as user-friendly as Windows. Well, maybe it's true, and maybe that is it's greatest strength. In fact, one of the main reassons I switched to Linux was that I wanted to use an OS that really encouraged me to actually learn how my own computer works. As I like to say in Spanish: "meterme a las tripas".
So I am on a constant journey in the fascinating and often weird world of Linux.
This will be a page where I write down things I learn about Linux. It might be a new command that I hadn't used before, or some feature I didn't know about.
I was trying to re-format a usb drive that had previously used as bootable drive to install Lubuntu on an old laptop. After using it I re-formatted it, but found out that if I left it plugged in, the PC would still boot to the installation page. Weird. Anyway, in the process I learned a few new tricks about partitioning and formatting a drive that I had not used before:
parted
Application for managing partitions.
cfdisk
Another one, but this one has a kind of hybrid command-line/gui interface. This is my go-to, for now.
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 conv=notrunc status=progress
This command is pretty cool. dd is a program for copying and formatting files, it can also be used to copy the ISO image to the drive. /dev/zero is a UNIX 'special file', like /dev/null, it outputs any number of bytes of null characters that is requested. This command is used to format a drive, so, in theory, it will just fill my 16GB drive with an empty file, if I understand correctly.
lsblk
A program to view devices and their partitions.